VERSUS To Air ‘Battle 4 Atlantis’ Basketball Tourney

VERSUS’ college football presence is pretty solid, with games or studio programming airing every Saturday and Monday from September through December. However, VERSUS’ college basketball stake has always been limited to assorted Mountain West regular season games and the men’s and women’ tournament championship games. However, over Thanksgiving weekend, VERSUS is getting involved with a pre-season tournament that features a couple of big-name schools.

The network, along with HDNet, will air the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament. This is a new tournament contested in the Bahamas from November 24th through the 26th. The participants are UConn, Florida State, Utah, UMass, Harvard, UNC-Asheville, UCF and College of Charleston. The television schedule follows:

November 24
2:00 p.m. ET UCF vs. College of Charleston (VERSUS)
4:30 p.m. ET UMass vs. Florida State (VERSUS)
7:00 p.m. ET UConn vs. UNC Asheville (HDNet)
9:30 p.m. ET Harvard vs. Utah (HDNet)

November 25
2:00 p.m. ET Semi-finals (VERSUS)
4:30 p.m. ET Semi-finals (VERSUS)

November 26
2:00 p.m. ET 3rd-place game (VERSUS)
4:30 p.m. ET Championship (VERSUS)

(Source: Blogging the Bracket)

NBC Sports to Bring Action Sports to VERSUS

From Tripp Mickle of Sports Business Daily:

Four months after reclaiming complete ownership of the Dew Tour, NBC Sports is moving action sports programming from Fox’s Speed and Fuel TV channels to Versus.

The first programming making that move comes from the AMA Pro Motocross Series, which the Dew Tour’s parent company, the Alliance of Action Sports (Alli), manages in partnership with the company MX Sports.

The move follows NBC Sports’ return to full ownership of the Dew Tour.

The series received 24 hours of programming on Fuel TV and 21 hours of race coverage on Speed this year. The 21 hours of programming on Speed will move next year to Versus, which will be renamed NBC Sports Network, and the 24 hours of programming on Fuel TV will air on allisports.com.

Versus will air 11 hours of motocross programming live, and NBC will continue to air three hours of live motocross as it has the past three years.

Greenburg to Bring Fans Closer to the Ice

If you haven’t read it yet, Wyshynski’s piece on Ross Greenburg is must read:

For the last two years, the most compelling television programs about the National Hockey League were being shown on a pay cable station that doesn’t air a single live hockey game.

HBO’s 2010 documentary “Broad Street Bullies” was a thorough and intuitive look at the history of the Philadelphia Flyers. Later that year, HBO presented “Penguins Capitals 24/7: The Road To The Winter Classic,” regarded as the series that changed how the NHL presents and sells its product through narrative television programs. (A second edition of “24/7″ begins in December.)

The architect for both projects was Ross Greenburg, the former president of HBO Sports who left that post in July. He’s won 51 Sports Emmy Awards, and also helped create “Hard Knocks” and “Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel.”

This week, the League announced the creation of NHL Original Productions, a join effort with Ross Greenburg Productions. The significance of this partnership can’t be stressed enough: The best parts of “HBO 24/7″ are going to be sliced up and packaged as their own programs on NBC Sports Network, The NHL Network and other platforms.

Meanwhile, the greatest stories in hockey history — from the 1972 Summit Series to the careers of players like Bobby Orr — are going to be tackled by one of sports television’s most successful guiding hands for documentaries.